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last updated 12/14/2003 |
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Irony is dead.
We heard it again and again after September 11. Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter started the ball rolling, proclaiming that "It's the end of the age of irony." Time and Newsweek agreed, along with dozens of other pundits and commentators. Cynicism, double meanings, sarcasm, these were all history. Honor, simplicity, sincerity, these were to be our future. To be ironic was almost to be unpatriotic, and to be unpatriotic was inconceivable. And from the start I (and many others) said: "Bullshit!" In these terrible times irony is a necessity. The American Heritage Dictionary defines irony as: "Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs" Which pretty much describes what's been going on since September 11. Politicians told us the world was one way, ignoring the far different reality. But if they said it with straight faces and firm jawlines, if they wiped away a small, manly tear as they said it, and waved the flag in the air, we were supposed to wash down their words with patriotic cheers. There was no irony, there were no double meanings. There was only the truth as presented to us by our glorious leaders. Who lie. And lie. And lie. The lies began from day one. When Bush heard about the attacks he jumped on a plane and went straight to...Nebraska. Why? We were told that there was a "credible threat" to Air Force One, so Bush had to cut and run. Cheney reiterated this "credible threat" line to Tim Russert on Meet the Press. William Safire, who originally wrote a scathing Sept 11 column attacking Bush's flight, was fed new "information" which he published in a Sept 13 column: A threatening message received by the Secret Service was relayed to the agents with the president that "Air Force One is next." According to the high official, American code words were used showing a knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible.Only it wasn't true. Later on White House staffers said there had been a communications mix-up. Yeah huh. A mix-up. Involving very specific lies spread to the media about specific threats, code words, and transponders. This was a cover-up designed to make Bush look good. By the time it came out that the threat to Air Force One never occurred, Bush had become a national hero, and mainstream media dropped the story. I was never a big fan of Rudy Giulianni, but I give the man credit: when the shit hit the fan, he headed straight towards danger (and almost every New Yorker was grateful for his grace and empathy in the midst of tragedy). Unlike our heroic President (who escaped duty in Vietnam by serving in the Texas National Guard). The Air Force One lie is small potatoes compared to some of the bigger lies we've been fed in the past sixteen months. The biggest lies concern the reasons for the September 11 attack. Bush opened the rhetorical war by calling the terrorists "evil-doers." In a September 20 speech he said Americans are asking, 'Why do they hate us?' They hate what they see right here in this chamber, a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms, our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.Bullshit. In their own minds the terrorists were not "evil-doers." They didn't sit around a table one day saying, "Hey, we're evil, so what evil deeds should we do today?" They saw themselves as heros, martyrs. They didn't give a damn about American democracy. What they cared about was America's support for governments they wanted to get rid of, first and foremost the Saudi Arabian monarchy, which is propped up by American weapons and troops. Without our help, the Saudi royal family--a bizarre collection of pampered oil princelings--would have been long gone, and Al Qaeda knows it. Then there is our blind support for Israel. This was not Al Qaeda's first motive--they've never had much in common with the fairly secular Palestinian Arabs--but it helps to explain much of the Arab world's anger towards the United States, and their subsequent sympathy for Al Qaeda's terrorist actions. Yet no one questions our support of Israel--a state that shoots children in order to maintain its control of the West Bank and Gaza--, a support that gains us more enemies every day. Please don't misunderstand me. I don't think our actions justify the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Al Qaeda's narrow-minded bigots killed 3,000 of my neighbors and I will never forgive that. However, it would be foolish not to at least reconsider some of our policies in the light of this catastrophe. Maybe, for example, we could reconsider those laws that classify S.U.V.s as trucks (freeing them from the more restrictive rules that apply to cars), which led to millions of these gas-guzzling monsters appearing on our highways, thereby increasing our dependence on Saudi oil and leading us to base American troops in a place where they are really not wanted. Instead Bush tells us it's all just about evil-doers, and chest thumping patriots can attach American flags to their Explorers, Navigators, and Hummers (thereby adding to wind friction, lowering gas mileage, and increasing our dependence on mideast oil) and stop worrying about their own anti-patriotic vehicles. Even the name of this conflict is a lie: The War on Terror. How can we have a war on terror? If terrorism is defined as attacking civilians in order to gain political advantage, it's practiced all over the world. We've done our fair share of terrorism, from carpet bombing German cities during World War II to carpet bombing Vietnamese villages during the Vietnam War. We were not attacked by "Terror", we were attacked by a specific set of religious fanatics who had specific reasons for attacking us. But misnaming our war against Al Qaeda as a "War on Terror" has some useful benefits for the Bush administration. It helps us to justify our continued support of Israel because they are faced with terrorist attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers. It also may (this is yet to be seen) be justification enough for an invasion of Iraq, a nation with no known connections to the terrorist attacks. Attempts by the administration to make a link between Saddam and Osama have gone nowhere, because they were, well, lies. So the lies continue, and we continue to swallow them. And Irony? Irony is the truth hidden between the lies. If irony were really dead, the truth would be too. Luckily they are both still alive and kicking, and I hope I can contribute a few samples here and there on this web site. Be seeing you. |
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